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The first trailer has been released for the movie adaptation of Orson Scott Card's sci-fi classic Ender's Game. It gives us a good look at Harrison Ford as Colonel Graff, Ben Kingsley as Mazer Rackham, and Hugo's Asa Butterfield as Ender. It also demonstrates just how much money they put into the special effects for this movie.

If this is keeping with that, then they are telling the story from the adult perspective, because 'keeping the secret' until the end makes it necessary to leave out too much of the story when you're telling it by film. So instead the audience knows, but Ender doesn't, so we get to see his actions knowing entirely what the consequences are. It also integrates some of the Ender's Shadow elements, like more information about Bean.

This is one book that I couldn't see Hollywood doing justice to. The trailer doesn't really leave me feeling any better about it. Lots of nice effects, but I think it's going to come out all bubble-gum.

10 years ago I would have said for sure they were just going to screw it up. Things have changed a lot in Hollywood. Where as before I would have given it a 10% chance of being any good, these days I give it closer to 50-50%

Ender is, in a way, an update of Starship Trooppers, with much less military actions. This is a good time to make it because the drone warfare that will characterize any hypothetical interplanetary conflict is finally believable to the general public. Most scifi still has the 60's nostalgia of in person human fighter pilots. Otherwise it is not fair. They did ok with troopers

OTOH making this movie should be like making lord of the flies. The intensity of violence is one of the drivers of the drama in the book. Which is why they may have a Ender that I too old. He should be 10 but how do you make such a film. It does not work I with teen angst, unlike troopers.

So we will get some teen flick. With space battles of sophisticated cgi when icons moving around would do. And a wasted Harrison ford. This is not Harry f'ing potter. It is children being brainwashed so they will kill. At least it was that simple until the sequels.

Since it's a morally complex point, I have little doubt that part will be cut from the film.

Hell they are flat out telling him what they are doing. When did they ever admit to their goals in the novel?

Quite. What a miserable mess. They rewrote it basically from scratch. Kept the names and the We Win part and redid everything else. Half of the point of the book was Ender didn't know. That he fought every single battle thinking it was just particularly grueling training. That the military lied to him and almost everyone else throughout the entire book. Little doubt? How about no doubt whatsoever? How can he "come to a realization" when that entire element has been completely removed from the plot? 5 seconds of footage is enough to know they completely rewrote the destruction of the alien planet. Where is Ender's despair? Where is his giving up on the "training"? The only part that's left is his decision to just blow it all up with the Little Doctor, and they turned that into a triumph, rather than the training failure Ender believed it to be.

No better than I expected. There was no way in hell they were going to do the book justice. Odds went up after Hunger Games, I guess. I could have sworn audiences would rebel against kids killing kids, but I constantly underestimate the bloodthirstiness of contemporary audiences. Still, looks like they failed, as expected, despite being able to keep the violence.

You're remembering it wrong.
They told him they needed a hero, but they never told him that he was going to lead the fleet. He thought it was going to be a defensive war.
Also, they attacked Earth first (First Invasion; that's when they used Eros as the staging point, that's when humanity "discovered" the ansible and artificial gravity). Then they attacked again (Second Invasion; Mazer defended earth). After that, they realized that humanity was intelligent and they decided to stop trying to invade Earth.
The Third Invasion was Ender attacking them.

The climax was Ender realizing that it wasn't a video game simulation, but that it was actually real and he just destroyed the homeworld of another species, killing billions, and more importantly, killing the only ones that had brains.

The military command lied to Ender by pretending he was still in a training exercise, but they did not lie about the need to "end them." Without communication with the aliens, there was no way for the humans to know that the queens had realized their mistake and were perfectly willing to live in peaceful coexistence. Given the sheer luck that allowed Razer to win the previous battle for Earth, they were reasonably certain Earth would never survive another attack.

On the one hand, I really did enjoy Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow as a kid (and to a lesser extent the other books in the series). On the other hand, art does not exist in a vacuum and I really do have a hard time separating Card's homophobic views from his works; especially since, in retrospect they do creep into his books at least occasionally.

On the gripping hand, this will almost certainly be a dud. It won't live up to the expectations and hopes of those who wanted the movie made 20 years ago and it won't have much appeal to the others.

On the other hand, art does not exist in a vacuum and I really do have a hard time separating Card's homophobic views from his works; especially since, in retrospect they do creep into his books at least occasionally.

Just out of curiosity, where do you see this? For full disclose, I enjoy the works of plenty of artists, actors, and musicians whose personal views I find abhorrent. I enjoy Card's books (Enchantment is one of my favorite novels), and I'll leave it at that.

It's been quite some time since I've read many of Card's books, but if I recall the extended Ender universe has non-evil and non-stereotypical gay characters. The Earthfall books had at least one gay character who was good. One of the characters in that s

On the other hand, art does not exist in a vacuum and I really do have a hard time separating Card's homophobic views from his works; especially since, in retrospect they do creep into his books at least occasionally.

Just out of curiosity, where do you see this? For full disclose, I enjoy the works of plenty of artists, actors, and musicians whose personal views I find abhorrent. I enjoy Card's books (Enchantment is one of my favorite novels), and I'll leave it at that.

It's been quite some time since I've read many of Card's books, but if I recall the extended Ender universe has non-evil and non-stereotypical gay characters. The Earthfall books had at least one gay character who was good. One of the characters in that series (a scientist) even explained that homosexuality had to do with conditions in the womb and wasn't a choice (it's been a long time since I've read this, so I could be slightly off).

I've never read it, but Card's book Songmaster [wikipedia.org] apparently deals with homosexuality to a large extent. I remember a friend of mine called it the "gayest" book he had ever read (she meant that in a positive way).

Where do you see Card's negativity towards homosexuality?

I'm not the GP poster, but I recall several times in the Bean stories where Card talks about how marriage is supposed to be between a man and a woman.

It's not about Gays being evil, it's about Gays being pitiful. The most obvious example is Anton from the Shadow series (I can't remember which novel the events take place in, perhaps spread between the second and third books). The first time you meet Anton, he's a depressed, suicidal, utterly devoid of purpose or direction and just so happens to be gay. His homosexuality isn't really the cause of his depression or other problems, that stems from things in his past both that he did and that were done to

Looks to me (based on this trailer alone) that the book got hammered and bashed to fit into the current Hollywood "sci-fi" form factor, lots of shiny graphics/scenery and some fractions of elements from the book (similar to I robot).

Children trained as soldiers? The film Soldier already did that very well, and I got a feeling it is closer to the book than the Ender's Game film will ever be.

Yes I read the book, I thought it was garbage pulp fantasy for those of limited breadth and imagination.

At the time I read Ender's Game as an adolescent, I thought it was awesome. Years later I picked it up again, and came to the same conclusion you did.

On the other hand, I didn't take much note of "Speaker for the Dead" as a young reader; it seemed a rather ho-hum sequel. I've since since changed my mind -- as a work of Science Fiction literature, it is the superior work. OTOH, Children of the Mind is still crap, Full Stop.

I've read both books, and as far as I can recall, the comparison is fairly apt.

There's nothing particularly ground-breaking in either, despite Slashdot's glorification of Ender's Game as some sort of nerd canon. It's pretty much EVERY sci-fi/fantasy story ever told:

Young loner boy is discovered/discovers that he is "someone special," goes on to save the world / become king / become most powerful wizard in history, learns that saving the world sometimes has a tremendous amount of negative repercussions, and that it's not all happy times when you're king.

It's Mary Sue Fantasy, dressed up with a bit of techno-babble about faster than light communication. Hunger Games didn't bring much new to the genre either (other than the film adaptation's use of the talents of Jennifer Lawrence, who I happen to think is a primo piece of ass second only to the adorable Anna Kendrick) - it's Lord of the Flies + Running Man + Logan's Run + every other dystopian fantasy you've ever read.

Neither of them are particularly ground-breaking literature, both are light, relatively enjoyable takes on established genre fiction, and neither of them are as momentously, insightfully philosophical as their fans try to make them out to be. The reason teenage girls like Hunger Games is because it has a tough teenage girl protagonist. The reason geek boys like Enders Game is because it has a loner misfit boy who turns out to have special powers that let him save the world, even though he's unappreciated by the society that birthed him. Each book provides its fans with the hero they wish they were.

You're describing elements of the Hero's Journey. That shows up damn near everywhere because it's a compelling template - the reluctant or unlikely hero who turns out to have more strength than they thought... it's an easy model to imagine yourself into, to draw inspiration from, as well as providing counterpoints to what would otherwise be "Awesome person saves the day again, the end"

That said, Ender's game does particularly gel with certain geek-guy stereotypes; the bullied outcast who gets to be entirely justified in striking back, and whose unique genius makes them valuable. There's a potential comparison with Twilight also; both books make for good escapist fiction (for the gender they're aimed at) whilst having some somewhat disturbing moral assumptions buried just below the surface.

The difference (I think) is that Ender's Game does that at least somewhat knowingly, to force you to consider some ugly ideas that it's holding up as virtues.

It's the deviations from the Hero's Journey that make a story interesting. The human brain is very good at looking for patterns; once a pattern is learned, the subtle changes away from the pattern are what provides the interest. This is how we distinguish faces, and it's why all Asians look alike to a westerner (the base pattern is tuned to one facial style, but Asian faces introduce more than just subtle differences from that pattern, which really throws things off).

There's nothing particularly ground-breaking in either, despite Slashdot's glorification of Ender's Game as some sort of nerd canon. It's pretty much EVERY sci-fi/fantasy story ever told:

Yeah, but some of that is the John Carter problem. It was groundbreaking and fresh when it came out, but in the interim it has been copied so many times that now the original story feels trite and formulaic.

The John Carter books *invented* the space opera, the alien princess, the lightsaber, and arguably the superhero. Just because those concepts have been rehashed ad infinitum shouldn't diminish the earlier work. Ender's Game invented some literary concepts also -- young heroes fighting for their lives,

Ender's Game is a great work of fiction because of the relationships, not because of the technology (which was for the general public visionary at the time) or because of the loner hero with latent superpowers (which he didn't have). Ender became great not because he was a genius but because of the deep bonds he formed with the other students, because of the community he built up around him that was greater than the sum of its parts. The climax of the book isn't beating the final boss, i

If you're a robot and take GP's comment literally sure. However, I'm assuming he refuses to read any of the books regardless of whether they came from a library or not, due to his sympathies for the gay community. My point being the author's personal views don't affect the quality of the works they produce. By GP's logic Tolkien is also a racist, so lets stop reading & watching LOTR... fat chance. You'll find that a lot of our creative geniuses don't necessarily win popularity contests.

Reading Nietzsche (as opposed to most sophomoric interpretations of him) doesn't encourage him to write more. Purchasing books from Card means my money will help in a bigoted crusade against a people that makes him feel funny inside. The funniest part is how Ender's Game was disallowed from a middle school for being too homoerotic. Methinks he doth protest too much.

You base all your purchasing decisions based on the personalities of who created the products? Do you read Shakespeare or avoid it because he wasn't a thoroughly modern politically correct person? Do you discount the writings of Jefferson because he owned slaves? Do you see Lincoln as someone who freed the slaves or instead as the dictator who suspended constitutional rights? Do you interview all people in the supply chain before buying, only use open source software if you can check the bios of everyone who worked on it, etc?

What about your family? Disowned all your ancestors as worthless scum who don't follow your political views? In the political war of Us vs Them you can't go soft and let some of Them go free.

It's an interesting point but isn't there a difference between giving money to someone alive right now who is actively working against your interests and reading the works of someone who has been dead for over 200 years?

I think you need to recast it in other terms.

For example- if you were sick and had to go to the emergency room, would you turn down the assistance of a racist, homophobic doctor?

Oh... and in the end it's my money so I get to decide where it goes. I reduced my consumption of Domino's Pizza tremendously as a related example.

I won't be a jerk in mixed company- but when I have the choice, I choose another company.

For example- Papa Johns tried to be jerks but relented under tremendous pressure. Darden's (Olive Garden) tried to be jerks and relented under pressure. Your consumer pressure can make the world a better place.

Just remember that Card is a person motivated by what he thinks is right not a corporation motivated by money. While you have the right to legally spend your money as you want what you are effectively saying is that you are trying to do is to force someone to change their beliefs or lose their job. So, while you might be acting within your rights, just remember that by doing so you are going against those ideals of free speech and belief that the US was founded on...and if you can't follow them is is any wonder that your government can't either.

By all means disagree with the guy but disagreeing, even vehemently, with him does not mean that you can't admire his skills as an author (although to be honest I'm not impressed with those either).

No. I'm saying that I won't give my money which I spent my time on to support a person I don't like.

There is more entertainment (and more pizza...) than I can possibly consume.

The ideals of the US are free speech -- which means the government shouldn't censor you.

And the best way to confront free speech you do not like is with more free speech. And the supreme court (as you may recalled) drew an equivalence between our money and our speech.

I liked the book.. when I was in my 20s. I read it once. Never reread it.

Mel Gibson and Tom Cruise didn't become bad actors when they showed themselves to be major asshats. But-- after they did, I didn't enjoy their work any more. I can't watch a mel gibson film without hearing that angry racist spouse beater and I can't go to a cruise film without hearing him ragging on Brooke Shields ( a really nice person ) and saying that stupid shit about post partum depression.

"what you are effectively saying is that you are trying to do is to force someone to change their beliefs or lose their job... remember that by doing so you are going against those ideals of free speech and belief that the US was founded on"Logically inconsistent. This is what passes for +5 these days?

TL;DR: It's not his personal beliefs that we're objecting to, it's his attempts to force them on the nation as a whole. That's directly counter to the ideals of the USA, incidentally.

First of all, none of the people I've met who have stated their goal of avoiding giving Card money have said it was because they don't agree with his beliefs, it's because they don't agree with how he spends his money. It's more akin to not giving money to a wino who spends every cent he acquires on turning himself into a human-shaped puddle of urine and rags in an alley. That said, there are almost certainly some who would nonetheless boycott his works even if he announced that henceforth he would have nothing to do with, nor provide any funding to, the National Organization for Marriage or any similar group, yet stood by the beliefs he had expressed, so that's a relatively weak point.On to "force somebody" in paricular: if a street preacher or televangilist shouts at me about sin and hellfire and damnation for anybody who doesn't donate to his particular church, and I choose not to donate, would you claim I am attempting to "force somebody to change their beliefs"? Not at all! I don't care whether his beliefs change, but I'm not going to pay him after he shouts them in my face and attempts to indoctinate me in beliefs that are contrary to my own. People whose beliefs are in line with his will take care of him, or perhaps not, but it's not my job to ensure he has a job!Of course, that's really the crux of the issue: "forcing" somebody to do something by voting with your wallet. Hypothetically, is OSC gets blacklisted by all major publishing houses and all bookstores refuse to carry his works - an extremely absurd hypothetical, but that's pretty much what it would take for an author to "lose his job", he can still self-publish and start his own distribution system. Nobody is stopping him from authoring books. The decision of whether that's worth doing when nobody will buy them is on him, but nobody is forcing him not to.Oh, and while we're discussing "forcing somebody...[to] lose their job", bear in mind that people lose jobs as a consequence of actions which are unappreciated by their employers (and for an author, one's "employers" are really "the people who purchase your books") all the time. If somebody breaks into a house and steals a TV, they can be fired for that. "Thief" is not an employment-discrimination-protected category of person. Nor is "homophobe". Incidentally, in many states, "homosexual" is, though that's not really relevant here.That brings us to the "ideals of free speech and belief" part of your post. Exactly which ideal upon which the US was founded indicates that we should financially support people who use their wealth to push for institutionalized discrimination against a minority population, again?Card is allowed to talk all he wants. The government isn't going to shut him up (unless he starts threatening violence against people). Any citizen who tries to shut him up will be committing a crime, and be prosecuted for it. Nobody has to give him a podium, though. The podium Card uses is the money he receives in return for his writing. Why do you imply that he is entitled to that podium? "All men are created equal" certainly doesn't suggest that just because one person writes good science fiction, that person's opinion on civil rights should be given more weight than those of a pauper in the streets!I could also turn your argument right back on you: a boycott is a form of speech. Why should Card be permitted to preach hate and prejudice, and the rest of us not permitted to tell him that we refuse to support his position?As for "... and belief", that's really the crown on the

Papa Johns was going to deny health care to their employees to save 14 cents per pie in expenses.

I disagree with your characterization of my position as smarmy arrogance. While you haven't stated it- it appears you basically support wage slavery and suffering for others as long as you are okay yourself.

Why do you feel that way?

Why do you think a company should be free to treat its employees very badly (ala Darden's) without the customers reacting to that poor tr

Well the comparison fails on a couple counts since a) the argument is about financially supporting the author and all the people you mentioned are long dead, and b) they were products of their time and were fine by that standard, OSC on the other hand is a bigot by the standard of this time.

That being said I'm not a big fan of boycotting something because of someone's views. There's nothing bigoted I remember about Ender's Game, but knowing Card's views does change how I perceive Ender's Game and how much I

I'm not really sure you read the same book I did. Ender's game isn't about "just following orders"... I can't think of a single character who has that as their motivation at any level. Everyone involved is either being lied to and manipulated or is trying to save the world by any means necessary. If you insist on making it about the military, I would take it as an attack on spending soldiers' lives on wars that the soldiers know and care nothing about. Especially since most of the people doing the fighting 'on screen' were drafted into the situation long before they could make that decision for themselves (even genius children can be manipulated).

But really it should be a story of "the ends justify the means" and questioning if they really do or not. Ender's Game is a story about adults who put kids through hell, leading to nervous breakdowns and at least a few deaths. All because they think it's the only way to save the world and in the end not only were they wrong, but their crimes were far worse than we had been led to believe.

The information given by Mazer towards the end basically points out that humanity had no other foreseeable option. (Adult) human strategists were incapable of giving tactically brilliant but suicidal for anyone chosen maneuvers. The long travel time for fleets meant ANY force sent would automatically be obsolete by the time it arrived causing any REASONABLE commander to simply withdraw. The military forces the Buggers were able to field we numerically so overwhelming that defensive strategies by humans were hopeless. Logical answer? Suicidal, "deal with what you got", "Never tell me the odds!" attacks.

The Bugger Queen only reinforces this fact. Once the Bugger Queen realized what they had done, they understood that they would have retaliated the same way the humans did had they suffered the same experence. Even if the Buggers wanted to end the war, they were aware the biological/psychological differences prevented communications (and therefore diplomatic means) from happening.

Were the crimes of the leadership bad? Yes. Were they irredeemably, unforgivably bad as they're made out to be in the sequels? In hindsight, Yes; in context, No.

That was what really bugged me in Speaker for the Dead -- they labeled him as the worst human being to ever live, the "Xenocide". Were people not told of the circumstances? Did they intentionally hide the context? If so, why would they do that? To save the skins of the people who orchestrated the events in the first book? It was left unexplained.

When you say "they" I think you missed part of the point. A huge part of speaker for the dead was the power of the stories of the Hive Queen and the Hegemon. Ender's self hatred was so powerful and his empathy with the hive queen so strong that he was able to tell the tale of her life and death and make himself the villain. As humanity took over the planets that the buggers/formics originally colonized, they realized the sadness inherent in that loss, and the horror of a single person killing an entire "beautiful" race.

Remember where the term "Speaker for the Dead" comes from (in-universe), though. Ender himself, anonymously, wrote The Hive Queen (also The Hegemon, though that's not relevant here) to tell the story from the perspective of the buggers, and that story is the one that the vast majority of the human universe read. Not an explanation of how the military treated him - if anything, that was covered up - and not the story of how humanity never had any other chance. Ender's goal was to give the Buggers a voice, to make humanity sympathetic toward them. If he was to succeed in that, it was neccessary that the one human who ordered the entire species wiped out be considered a monster. Sure, he could have (and it probably would have been more justified) pinned that on Graff, or on Mazer Rackham, or on any number of other people who put him in the position to unknowingly give that order... but that would have distracted from the story, and they didn't have the insight into the alien race that he did, anyhow. He made himself the scapegoat, accepting responsibility for what he did without knowing the consequences, because it made the story better, and thus furthered the goal of "speaking for the dead".

As a sort of side note, a little over a hundred years ago, Americans who managed to kill an unusually large number of "Indians", or to hold out against them in desperate combat, were regarded as heroes. Today, they are still sometimes seen as legends, but also sometimes as monsters or at least murderers. From a time when "wiping them out" was perceived as a laudable goal, to a time when there is a sort of nationwide shame for what we did, in a mere century. That's without anything even remotely close to the impact of The Hive Queen (as described in Card's fiction), and without an actual, literal [g|x]enocide. Imagine how it will be viewed after another 400 centuries...

Speaking of the plot, the part in the trailer when he says "now" is the climax of the book (though arguably the revelation that comes afterwords is the "punch line"). Why the hell did they put the finale of the book in the trailer?
(and no, this isn't a spoiler post, because if you haven't read the book then you won't know what you're seeing or what it means)

Perhaps more to the point, it's recently become poignant. In these days of drones, war is becoming like a video game for at least some of those who are fighting it. It's a pretty timely film, from that perspective.

In case you're referring to his political views, I'd have you consider an excerpt from Janis Ian [janisian.com], a friend of Card's whose personal life is also relevant to the recent controversies surrounding him:

I'm sorry you appear ready to discount or avoid a writer of Card's stature, because I consider Scott one of the finest writers of my generation, period. His short stories about musicians and music are the best I've ever read. What a pity, to deny yourself and your friends the illumination that level of artistry can provide!
I suppose we'd also have to discount Wagner because of the Nazi connection? James Joyce and Ezra Pound for their anti-Semitism? Thomas Jefferson, who believed slavery was God-intended? Most, if not all, of the founding fathers, who considered black Africans sub-human?
Continuing in that vein, we should probably discount Picasso, a sexist pig. And Beethoven, a royalist and a snob if you ever met one - and if memory serves, an anti-Semite.
Not to mention the current pope, who's called homosexuality as big a threat to the world as global warming, and warned that it would destroy civilization as we know it if gays were allowed to marry.
Should I discount every faithful Catholic writer, dump Tennessee Williams, Madeleine L'Engel, Flannery O'Connor, because their religion's figurehead is a lunatic?
Sorry if you're Catholic...
Scratch any artist, in any form, and you'll find things you don't like. You can't judge art by the artist; it has to be judged seperately, on its own merits. The artist himself has to be taken in the context of his times, and of his own culture, including his religion.
So long as that art isn't being used to actively cause or promote harm to someone, as in a "Triumph of the Will," I don't think anyone has the right to judge the work by the artist's personal beliefs.
But that's my own take.
Just for the record, as a gay person who campaigned for and voted for Obama - Obama doesn't think we should be able to marry, either. For many of the same reasons. And I'm sure you're aware of his former pastor's views on not just gays, but whites, and Jews. I have no idea what Obama thinks about gay people, and I fear it's "hate the sin, love the sinner," which I find condescending and disrespectful in the extreme. I'm still glad he's president, and I still think he's an honorable man.
Again, I'd hate to think anyone avoided great art just because they disagreed with the artist...
On a last note, to say someone is "crazy" or a "lunatic" because they deeply disagree with you, well, that's just as narrow, isn't it?
Janis

[Emphasis mine] Appreciate art on its own merits and you'll be the happier for it. Not everything has to be politicized. When everything is politicized, we become incapable of finding common ground with people we disagree with. When we can't even appreciate art together with others who have views we disagree with, how can we ever learn to tolerate each other? How can we have unity amidst diversity if we do not, as Plato said, have a communion of pleasure where we might at least rejoice and mourn over some things we hold common?

You seem to be talking about art, while the GP is referring to money. Apparently the GP does indeed appreciate the art but would rather not give his money to an artist he doesn't deem fit to receive it.

Re: "would rather not give his money to an artist he doesn't deem fit to receive it."

I would not object if GP thought Ender's Game was homophobic and therefore refused to give money for it. But based on his desire to get the movie through bittorrent, GP thinks Ender's Game is something he'd enjoy. His objection, therefore, isn't to this particular work of art, but strictly to the views of the artist. So you're quite right to say that he doesn't deem the artist fit to receive money.

To make clear my objection to this, I'd ask whether the same attitude ought to be applied in other spheres of life. If you regard the bartender as homophobic, does that mean you wouldn't pay him for beer (since, believing and saying things you consider reprehensible, you've deemed him unfit to receive money)?

Or to put this another way, imagine a different set of circumstances. Imagine an evangelical walking into a Starbucks and buying a coffee. This evangelical receives very good service and is about to give a tip but notices the barista has an earring in his right ear. What would we think of this evangelical if he did not then give the tip because he regarded the barista as unfit to receive it? (Mind, I'm not trying to say all evangelicals would do such a thing--some undoubtedly would but most are just ordinary folks like the rest of us.) Is it anyway to participate in a society, not to distinguish between a worker and his work when the work is not what we find reprehensible?

If you regard the bartender as homophobic, does that mean you wouldn't pay him for beer (since, believing and saying things you consider reprehensible, you've deemed him unfit to receive money)?

You seem to be missing a rather large point - the bartender is unlikely to use his position to promote his views in the way that Card can. However, if the bartender is flying a flag in his bar that proudly proclaims "Faggots aren't human" or other reprehensible statements, than absolutely he's unfit to receive my money. Would you happily hand over your money in that case? Surely there's some viewpoint you find reprehensible - would you willingly immerse yourself in it simply because the wings are good?

In short, when you give money to famous people who use it to become more famous and they share views which disagree with yours you are funding a future you don't want to live in. They have more influence than you do, and you're helping them use it to create a lesser world from your viewpoint. You have a choice as to where you spend your money, and while it can be difficult to determine what the results of your actions will be, when it's obvious then you really owe it to yourself to change your purchasing habits.

Exactly. It may be a fine movie, but I don't want any portion of my ticket price to be funding anti-gay hate speech, period.

Tolerance goes both ways. It is far too easy to claim the high road and seek to prevent those with different viewpoints from being heard. It is another thing entirely to stand and defend a persons right to freedom of speech when you don't like their message. If you can't acknowledge his right to speak his mind, then you are no better than he is.

Exactly. It may be a fine movie, but I don't want any portion of my ticket price to be funding anti-gay hate speech, period.

Tolerance goes both ways. It is far too easy to claim the high road and seek to prevent those with different viewpoints from being heard. It is another thing entirely to stand and defend a persons right to freedom of speech when you don't like their message. If you can't acknowledge his right to speak his mind, then you are no better than he is.

There is a big difference between a person acknowledging his right to speak his mind and buying the megaphone for him to speak it loudly.

You clearly were asleep when they covered freedom of speech and tolerance in High School. Freedom of speech: the ability to not have the government regulate what you can and cannot say. Tolerance: the willingness to let others live their lives in peace, for as long as they return the favor. Furthermore, merely declining to financially support someone you disagree with is not nearly the same as preventing someone with different viewpoints from being heard.

Card has some gay characters in his work and they're portrayed sympathetically (or, at least as much as any other of his characters), so the "anti-gay hate speech" can't be referring to his art. So it must refer to statements he's made on his personal blog, etc.

If this is the case, I can only reconstruct your reasoning thus (please feel free to let me know if I'm missing your point): 1) Card says things I consider reprehensible; 2) Giving him money supports his ability to say reprehensible things; 3) Therefore, if I pay for his work, I am implicated in the reprehensible things he does.

If I am correct in understanding this line of reasoning, it must be a terrible burden to bear. For consistency's sake, it would implicate you in the wrong doing of anyone to whom you pay for services, whether a news-paper editor who runs the local daily, a car mechanic, or a doctor. We could imagine the editor, the doctor, and the mechanic attend rallies on the weekend where they say things we consider reprehensible. But according to this line of thought, by paying for the weekly classified ads, getting bronchitis treated, and having brakes checked, is funding reprehensible speech. To be truly consistent in this line of reasoning, you'd need to evaluate the politics (or morals, if you prefer) of everyone you interact with in civil society before exchanging money with them.

This notion of "funding people [...] you don't support" is totalizing: it politicizes all acts in civil society. One might deem it a good thing to do this, but it is not a step toward a tolerant and diverse society.

Card doesn't just have beliefs; he is politically vocal about them. He funds multiple organizations that campaign against gay marriage including the LDS and the National Organization for Marriage... which has no purpose other than to oppose gay marriage. He funds them with money earned from creative works like this movie, and even cares enough to become a member of their board of directors.

Card has also said that people engaging in homosexual acts should be imprisoned. His more recent "clarification" of

Anybody who thinks James Joyce was antisemitic plainly hasn't done the research - in particular, hasn't read Ulysses. Or even seen a synopsis of the plot...

General point is right, though. Which proves that even people who don't bother checking facts get it right sometimes.

Not difficult to construct a list of horrible people who made great novels, great poetry, great art... but then only people who think that Art can play the role of morality or religion should be surprised.

To clarify, the non-fact-checker I'm dissing is Janis Ian, not cervesaebraciator, whose comments are highly sensible (I reckon) and who has made a good catch in finding the Janis Ian quote. Evidently a fact-checker.

The most fascinating part of this, for me, is that I connected with Ender's Game more easily as a young adolescent precisely because I was gay and understood how harsh and how quickly a child has to grow up. I also understood empathizing with my enemy, my enemy not understanding the degree of harm he was doing to me, and not trusting adults or authorities.

I also keenly felt the idea of being tested in subtle ways, in manipulating adults and politics with their own fears, and deeply appreciated the affects of demagoguery before I even knew what it was called.

I felt like Orson Scott Card so deeply understood the plight of being a bright, homosexual child with more self-awareness and introspection than many an adult, that I was shocked to find out that he was so antagonistic to it. This was after I read Speaker of the Dead which seems to so perfectly capture that sensation of oppression.

Maybe my sense of connecting with the author and his general outlook on human emotion was so great, that to find out he is as homophobic as he is caused a deep-seated sensation of betrayal and cognitive dissonance. Also, I don't even want to separate my knowledge of the artist from the art, which is a topic worthy of an essay itself.

Also, I feel that while it seems a bit pushy and bitchy, and will evoke the typical "uppity homosexual" response, complaining about a popular person's homophobia and suggesting that they, and even their art, be considered as lesser because of it, still seems to me to be an effective way at showing strength and causing people to realize the tenuousness of their position.

No art or artist is held to account for all their crimes, and in the fullness of time people will forgive Card as a fuddy duddy for his homophobia, but in the here and now where it has extreme political relevance to my life and the lives of hundreds of thousands of people on this globe, I say he is an ass for his views and I do not wish to patronize him. Let the future enjoy him unfettered by these concerns like I can enjoy Wagner now.

He's an active practicing Mormon who wrote an article for a Mormon audience about how someone can't be a practicing Homosexual and dedicated to the Homosexual scene and also be dedicated to the Mormon church.

Presuming you know anything about the Mormon church, is there anything in that sentence you disagree with? His article was basically you can't serve two masters.

Mr. Card has a long and well-established history of homophobia and attacking gay rights. He's been a board member of the anti-gay marriage National Organization for Marriage for years, and has written far more than, "one article for a Mormon audience". Here are some examples, more can easily be found with a quick google search.

"I find the comparison between civil rights based on race and supposed new rights being granted for what amounts to deviant behavior to be really kind of ridiculous. There is no compa

This reminds me of 2 of my ex-girlfriends.
One would not read The Chronicles of Narnia because she was Christian and the books were not.
The other would not read them because the books were too Christian.

I am with Cervesaebraciator on this one – judge art on it’s own sake. And if it bugs you too much then borrow the DVD from the local library – Card won’t get too much money that way.

What is it with religious fanatics that can so little tolerate a hint of disagreement that it ruins their enjoyment of so many things in life? And no, I'm not talking (only) about OSC.

Intelligent people will have contrasting deeply-held beliefs. That's human nature. Your life will be better, and society will involve far less conflict, if one learns some tolerance for people who disagree. It's pure arrogance to think all of your beliefs are right in any case - you're assuredly wrong about something import

Is my position that people who want to own stuff have to decide between supporting the industry that produced it and not owning it? Hell yes, that's what I'm saying. It doesn't matter if it's some sleek electronics gadget produced in China under bad labor and environmental controls or entertainment IP produced by someone who actively campaigns against the rights of fellow human beings.

You certainly have the right to spend money on anything you want. You can buy stuff from the KKK too. You just don't get to

It was 7 when I first looked. Give it time. OTOH, I doubt that an article on the first trailer will get into the 300+ levels. It was not nearly as good as the first trailer for the original Superman was (which came out 18 months before the movie, and the big news was that they got Marlon Brando to appear in it, not its subject or its "star").